Israel’s Canadian Critics Demonstrate the ’3D’ Anti-Semitism Formula

Natan Sharansky is one of my heroes. One of the founders of the Refusenik movement, he was arrested on charges of spying for the United States and treason, and sentenced to 13 years of forced labor in the infamous Soviet Gulag. Intense international pressure resulted in his release in 1986, following which he immediately made aliyah. Despite the tremendous rigors of his life and incarceration in the former Soviet Union, he subsequently became a prolific author and a major participant in Israeli politics. He has been honored with both the Congressional Gold Medal (1986) and the Presidential Medal of Honor (2006), and currently serves as chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

One of Sharansky’s best-known writings may be one of his briefest. In a 2004 article published in the Jewish Political Studies Review, he proposed a “3D Test” to determine whether criticism of Israel is legitimate or simply antisemitism in disguise.

The 3D Test is a very useful tool for advocates of Israel, since those who hate Israel are capable of fiendish cleverness. I guess that when you have such animosity toward something, you will find any way to attack it, whether directly or indirectly. We see this all the time from such things as the BDS movement, the absurd pronouncements and rulings that frequently emanate from the United Nations and its bodies and agencies, and the annual fantasy week that makes the most specious allegations against Israel.

One of the newest tactics of those who hate Israel is to assert that while Israel has an enviable record (though they would never use that term) in a certain area (such as gay rights), it is all just a cover to “pinkwash” the underlying crimes of Israel against the Palestinians. Hence you get the utterly ridiculous notion of Queers Against Israel Apartheid.Think about that for a second and try not to shake your head so violently as to give yourself a neck injury.

Taking this extremely dubious method of “thinking” to new extreme frontiers, a few fringe anti-Israel activists in Atlantic Canada have criticized renowned Nova Scotia artist Tom Forrestall. The reason? Forrestall painted a series of watercolors while accompanying a 2010 mission to Israel organized by the Atlantic Jewish Council. The local anti-Israel crowd (really, just a handful of people) claimed that Mr. Forrestall’s works consist not only of watercolors but “whitewash,” and that the mission was simply an attempt by Israel to “change the channel” regarding Israel’s human rights abuses. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio station in Halifax was even somehow convinced that this was a story worthy of airtime.

45 Comments, 15 Threads

1.
Fail Burton

On close examination one can discern the watercolors in question are in fact clearly tilted to the right, an inflammatory thumb of the nose to the political Left, as well as truth, justice and cute little babies and kitty cats purring by an open fire. If you ever saw a mangy typical cat in Cairo you’d turn green but I’m just saying…

But you see the trick. They don’t have to “win”. All they have to do is get the artist to say, “I’m just visiting; I have nothing to do with the politics”, and the implication to the listener is, “well, Israel is evil but artists should have freedom”. Not to mention scaring off the next guy.

The Arabs are “oppressed”. “Oppression” can never be the legitimate consequences of the behavior of the “oppressed”, it ONLY flows from the black heart of the “oppressors”. “Oppressors” are evil. If only oppressors did not exist the world would be a happy place where everyone lived in harmony and plenty.

The Arabs are oppressed by Islam as are all Muslims in the world. The Arabs who are not Muslim, such as the Coptic Christians, are even more oppressed by the Muslim Arabs. The Arabs who live in Israel as Israeli citizens have far greater freedom than any Muslim living in any theocratic Muslim land.

Israel sets a new high standard in the world for tolerance and forbearance by not harming those who would see it destroyed. Until these prejudicial pigs actually take up arms against Israel, they are immune from physical threat.

This is going to be a hard standard to meet by the remainder of humanity, but the standard is now part of world history. China, Pakistan, Egypt, Venezuela, Argentina, Russia, Saudi Arabia, even South Africa now look like primitive sadists in their treatment of their minorities and dissidents compared to the law-based Israeli methods.

Just like the world runs on a seven-day week compliments of the Jews, that includes days of rest and relaxation, the world will be forced to use the standards in law that the world is forcing Israel to meet and which she does with such grace. Humanity is being dragged forward, kicking and screaming, by their obsession with the Jews. How strange!

This is a very strange and interesting comment, Jerry. I am Jewish. I reside in Israel. I have pondered, read and researched information re anti-Semitism (Jew hatred including self-hatred)in order to gain knowledge as to its roots, growth, re-growth and its sustaining properties as well as its results. I have never considered these phenomena in terms of its positive impact on humanity, how Jews may be humanitys’ pioneers just by factors of punishment, deprivation (spiritual and physical), victimization and non-acceptance and to our collective responses to these phenomena as an anodyne to human development, as it were, “kicking and screaming”, and, ironically, being forced to integrate the same high level of morality enforced upon our little nation-state. At a personal level, my first response is one of surprising appreciation for your having stated such. My second-level response is, were I to have a choice, I’d like to do without it and my third-level response is that may be what the Jewish people are all about in the scale of a developing humanity. I may have more thoughts about your comments and thesis. Undoubtedly, I will. I’m sure our Kabbalists would have something to add here. And thank you, at least up until now!

The first elements of socialism are found in Plato, and even Thomas More’s Utopia has many socialist aspects. Most of the early nineteenth century leaders (Saint-Simon, Babeuf, Fourier, Blanc, Owen, Proudhon)in putting forth the socialist idea were not Jewish. A hell of a lot of them were French, some were British, and it was a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. Parts of the persecuted Jewish population in Europe latched on to the idea relatively late.

But I agree with Herb. And by relatively late, he means they were pretty heavily supportive of Internationalist Communists, which is part of the reason why they came in for such ill treatment by another far Left Marxist faction, the National Socialists.

Let me speak as someone not Jewish, never been to Israel, a Christian residing in America, only have a few friends that are Jewish not because I don’t like Jews but because there are very few Jews were I live.

Your attitude is the most tacit form of anti-Semitism and the most cowardly – marginalizing the complaint or concern.

So here is my offer to cowards like you. Israel Jews make up approximately 0.09% of the people on earth. When they start to receive 0.09% of the criticism of all that ails the globe, you’ve got a friend.

By that logic, Hitler should get little blame or hatred because he was just one of many Germans.

Personally, I don’t care a lick what people call each other…Jew, Muslim, Palestinian, Israeli…whatever. You ain’t American and Christian so unless they got oil, why should we honestly give a rat’s butt?

Thanks for the clarification. You helped me see the subtle distinction. The modern state of Israel is about 60 yrs old. Antisemitism goes back some 2000 yrs. There should be little doubt in any honest person’s mind that the unreasoning attacks on the state of Israel by the lingering infection that is antisemitism.

The study of Anti-Semitism gives great insight into Anti-EuroChristianism. Most US Jews for example are Anti-EuroChristianists….in the same mold as various stripes of Anti-Semites….often within the Leftist realm of critique which is soaked in disingenuousness, deviousness, and deceitfulness.

Sad but true.

That isnt to say that Jews are the only group that this is the majority position held by individuals within that group, there are a plethora of identity groups for which this is true. They all hide behind “legitimate criticism,” of course.

From my understanding of history Jews have ample reason to be wary of Christians in general, and European Christians in particular. A high point of violence by Christians against Jews, for no particular reason, came in the 1930′s and 1940′s. It is true the Nazi’s were the chief perpetrators, however, most Christians everywhere sat there like the three monkeys, hearing, seeing and speaking nothing, deliberately so. Jews have every reason to be wary of Christians, history has taught them well. You can’t justify antisemitism because Jews remember what has been done to them again, and again, and again, . . .

Take a good look at what is at the head of those graves. Those are Christians that died on the beaches of Normandy in least in part saving Jews from the butchering by Nazi hands.

I’ve defended Israeli Jews in their complaints – very real and very true. Now it’s my turn to defend my own from the bigots. American Christians have no worse enemies, jackbooted thugs and fascists themselves, than many of these secular American Jews, many in Congress, equally as pathetic and equally as bigoted as any Pali or sympathizer. And the only reason were not squished like bugs by these fascists, are that we are so numerous and still hold a fair amount of clout.

And don’t tell me that’s not true. I’ve experienced the bigotry first hand right here in my hometown. Where do I begin nationally? SPLC, ACLU, ADL, Hollywood just to name a few? So before you begin to throw stones, you might want to balance the scales in weighing your opinion.

Frankly, it’s personally offensive to me and I am going to call you on the double standard in judgment.

You’re being a little harsh, Tex, but sadly the main thrust of your statement is correct. I think it has to do with that cultural memories of most peoples tend to be conservative (in the apolitical sense) to the point of sclerosis, and Jews, particularly American Jews, remain stranded in the past where Christians are concerned. Too many of us simply don’t, or refuse to, recognize that American Christianity has evolved beyond the old European need to use Jews and Judaism as foils for its own culture – as the negative image or bad example. Objectively, this is not your great-grandfather’s Christianity anymore, and I’m not talking about high academic theology, either. The average American Christian doesn’t, and I believe simply CAN’T, see Jews in the old way anymore. This was proven to me when Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ” film did contain some classic anti-Jewish imagery, but most of its audience didn’t so much reject that aspect of the movie as simply fail to see it at all. In other words, that old button is no longer there for the pushing here in the good ol’ USA. What’s necessary now is for American Jews to start our own process of evolution and let go of OUR comfortable stereotypes.

I have an uncle in one of those graves. They did not go ashore to save Jews. If you walked among those graves you might be struck by the disproportionate number of Stars of David. The same is true at Tunis and Manila, I can’t speak for the others. It wasn’t only Christians that Liberated Europe.

It should be noted that FDR denied asylum German Jews. My sister remembers the article detailing the shipload of Jews being turned away and ultimately returning to their fate in Europe. She also remembers the response by her Pastor to her question of why, “Christ Killers, they have it coming.” The Pope at the time knew what was going on!

I call your attention to Kristallnacht.(No link, pick from the list from Google.) The American Newsreels of the event still exist. And, there are more! American Christians KNEW, according to my sister some even cheered, people who attend the same church! American Christians heard, saw, but by and large did not speak! It was a time when Christians could have done much better. The main reason we need Christ’s grace is we have a habit of not acting like him.

One last thing. You blame the whole for the actions of the few. What is that called again? I stand by my main premise, Jews have ample Justification to be wary of Christians. 2000 yrs of history validates my position! You could say history doesn’t matter. But then, only Liberals could get away with that.

You can see how deeply hostile to Christians, Jews are. Whether justified or not. Jews will love self hating Christians who commiserate with them how dreadful Christians are, and how they need to be disempowered so that they can no longer inflict harm upon “Others.” It’s the same dynamic with Israel, where Jews now hold a territory and administer it in accordance with their own interests and well being, and minorities complain of ill treatment and oppression and the need to disempwer Jews in Israel via mass immigration of “Others” and the radical secularization of the Jewish state, minority empowerment and rights, the continuous demonization/criticizm of the Jewish State, and so on and so forth.

These minorities and Others are now building an historical record of ill treatment and misdeeds as perceived by them, with regards to Jews, whom they will claim to be rightly wary of.

You see how that works?

Barbara Lerner Spectre (see video below) let slip that it wont be Euro-Christian Xenophobia and irrational hatred that will be the impetus of hostility to Jews in the future, but reaction to their political activity in support of the colonization of Europe by Others and the disempowerment of Euro-Christians in their territories, territories that they have call their own for milenia.

The same when done to Israel is rightly perceived as Anti-Semitism. And when it is done by Jews (and Others) to Euro-Christians it is no different and is just as ugly.

You cant have it both ways, unless you revert to tribalist perspective…ie…”Is it good for the Jews?”

The sad thing is, that these Leftwing Jews who support mass immigration of South Asian and MENA Muslims into Europe, reveal that they hate Euro-Christians more than they love Jews….because it is painfully clear that these new immigrants are Jew haters extraordinaire. The kind which make Ron Paul look philosemitic by comparison.

And I hate to say it, but it looks like FDR’s policy was prudent, given Jewish political hositility to the dominant host population in the United States for the last half century.

Mass immigration of people that are deeply hostile to you and yours isnt good policy or else the Israelis would grant the Right of Return. That is if the governments are actually promoting the interests of the majority population in a nation state.

I am not an Anti-Semite. I am philosemitic, deeply indebted to Jewish culture and philosophy, and a staunch supporter of Israel as an (imperfect) Jewish State.

Tex, thanks for your defense of Israelis. Like you I have family members buried in Normandy. Let me see if I can quickly explain liberal Jews and their attraction to modernist causes. One rabbi put it well: the religion of liberal Jews is liberalism. Many Jews in the Old Country gravitated to liberal/socialist/communist movements and became non-religious because those movements promised a utopian society where discrimination, rape, dispossession, murder and violence suffered for being Jewish would come to an end. History proved this to be a lie. But the young Jews looking for a brighter future couldn’t foresee Stalin,Trotsky et al. Their relatives who immigrated to the US found freedom and as piece-workers in the garment industry, believed in progress, unions, a fair wage, an end to discrimination, etc. They also either lost religious practice or amended it to Reform Judaism, which isn’t even recognized as authentic Judaism by the majority of Israelis, as it replaces G-d’s word with “social justice” as defined by each practitioner.

Traditional Jews embrace their faith and history, and many of us are political conservatives. We value family, faith, hard work and the freedoms we and our countrymen have fought for….and speaking only for myself, I’m never sure if I should be embarrassed or ashamed of the assimilated, uber-liberal Rahm Emanuel’s of the American Jewish Community whose “social justice” ambitions often are merely a guise for ego-feeding populism.

Legitimate criticism doesnt spring from fear and loathing. Anti-EuroChristianism is the base emotion and the “legitimate criticism” is the rationalization of that hatred.

These haters then cling to self hating Euro-Christians to legitimize their own demonization as legitimate criticism.

One man’s legitimate criticism is another man’s hate speech.

What is being done to Jews and the Jewish State of Israel is what the Left has done and continues to do with regards to Christians and the Euro-Christian nation states.

Haters and deconsturctors are seeking to destroy both groups and their institutions, and demonize them. Some Euro-Christians support the destruction of Israel and the majority of Jews support the destruction of Euro-Christian nation states.

Like this one for example. Who no doubt feels very good about herself, and doesnt feel herself to be a hatefilled destroyer of Euro-Christendom…but the promoter of progress to address legitimate greivances.

The only interesting aspect of this reporting from our friendly neighbor to the north is that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation picked up the story and served as a megaphone to millions for a scant handful of provincial and otherwise unimportant Jew Haters.

The role of journalists in the promotion and even promulgation of modern anti-Semitism is routinely overlooked. Slanders against Jews and the Jewish State are regular fare in the dominant media. Hostility toward Israel and its supporters in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post is assumed.

A sub-phenomenon of media anti-Semitism are careerist Jewish journalists who make themselves controversial, hence read and discussed and well paid by the simple device of Jew baiting. Anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic reporting and editorial comment fills the editorial mailboxes with angry responses which gladdens the hearts of editors and publishers and buys greasy Jewish scribblers journalistic prominence and big paycheck.

Academia and the foreign service are the other two prominent broadcasters and amplifiers of Jew-hatred. John Kerry plainly stated in his confirmation hearing that hostility toward America and the West in the Middle East, South Asia and the Maghreb were all rooted in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This absurd, plainly demonstrated falsehood–kin to the Christian slander that the Jews killed god and the Muslim slander that Jews are killers of prophets and Hitler’s slander that the Jews are engaged in a war against the German people–dominates thinking in the State Department and the Administration and, perhaps, the Pentagon. And Kerry was confirmed by 94% of the Senate.

Jew hatred is a multifaceted phenomenon and weighing its sources, especially in the modern, secular world, it is easy to forget that religion and jealousy for God’s imagined favor is what lies at its heart. Anti-Semitism rages only among present and former adherents to Judaism’s religious and cultural derivatives. In cultures whose dominant religion doesn’t include a book, a sabbath and one unique God, anti-Semitism is virtually unknown. Buddhists and Hindus do not obsess on Jews and Judaism, hence don’t reflexively hate either.

This will get me in trouble because I will state something wrongly. But there is a Christian gospel ‘Was it you (who crucified my lord)?’.

The answer to the song can be simplifed to be ‘yes it was me’. The subtext is more or less repetence.

Going further down my dangerous path, if we hear a modern day sermon about the Pharisees, we all realize that the Pharisees that want to see Jesus crucified are still with us. And they don’t wear little hats on Friday.

Further it was not the little hats that were ever the issue.

When I see a passion play, i want to think it would be me picking up the cross. But the odds are more on me being either a bystander, or the solider picking up overtime overseeing an execution.

Thats the reality of us christians. so you should not fear its something else if its really not.

Slanders against Jews and the Jewish State are regular fare in the dominant media. Hostility toward Israel and its supporters in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post is assumed. – David Levani

Slanders against Christians and Christian nation states including the USA are regular fare in the dominant media. Hostility towards the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, and other European Christian nation states and their supporters in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Sydney Morning Herald and the Times of London, Le Monde, and Der Speigal is assumed.

-Check out Daniel Gordis’ The Promise of Israel – in brief, Israel’s insistence on nationalism or covenant as a model for humanity is seen as the roadblock to a Utopian dream of universalism, which Gordis demonstrates is a form of slavery. By the way, the CBC is consistently antisemitic on Israel.

I will criticize any religion, any country, any philosophy, any man, any book, any movie for any reason I please, as often as I please, any time I please. That is a basic right of a human being and, further, my basic right as a US citizen. Only self defense is as basic a right. If substantives show me to be in error I will apologize and amend my outlook.

The question about the genesis and reasons for anti-Semitism requires several answers. Obviously, the Catholic Church was in on its beginning, labeling Jews as Christ-killers. But much of the blame must be shared by Jews themselves. Religions are all about power, marketing and growth. Jews failed to recognize this. Labeling themselves as the chosen people brought envy and antagonism. This concept pre-empted them from proselytizing and growth. Hitler might have thought twice before building gas ovens if there had been two billion Jews in this world who could descend on him from all sides. And then there has been the Jewish need to be civilized, to avoid violence and to seek peace at all costs. Peace is unnatural in this world. There is war going on constantly in our bodies. Germs try to enter us and our antibodies, our internal gladiators, fight them off. Even today with an excellent defense force, many Israeli Jews seek peace with their neighbors who have only one objective, to completely destroy Israel. For years Israel failed to respond to daily rockets fired at them from the Gaza. When Jews begin to practice violent reactions to anti-Semitism, when they learn what kids in primary grades learn – that giving a bully a bloody nose tends to tame the bully – anti-Semitism will continue. As long as they seek world approval for being decent, they’ll suffer from anti-Semitism, often masked as anti-Zionism. When anti-Semites organize blockade- running boats, Israel needs to simply blow them out of the water and sink them. And most of all, they need to stop fretting about anti-Semitism. The world is filled with prejudice by neighbor against neighbor. They need to learn “fuggedaboutit.”

All good points except in one regard: “Labeling themselves as the chosen people brought envy and antagonism. This concept pre-empted them from proselytizing and growth.”

“Chosen people” isn’t our label–according to the Old Testament/Torah, it was G-d who said He chose us–NOT, as so many misconstrue it, to be people above all others, but rather “chosen” to be the receivers of G-d’s Torah. It’s not a hey-we’re-better-than-you kind of sobriquet (and in fact we’re reminded constantly of how we’ve failed to live up to G-d’s word both in the Torah and later writings of the Prophets and Sages).

As for proselytizing–we used to do that. Very successfully, in fact. What stopped it was the Catholic Church which, after it became the state church of the Roman Empire, made “Judaizing” (proselytizing) punishable by death. Later,the Muslims made the same rule….so the two major religions of the western world made converting people to Judaism punishable by death….and not just the rabbi’s death–the entire community could be killed or expelled. Sort of stopped conversions to Judaism dead in its tracks.

People tend to hate and fear what they don’t know. In Europe, Jews were marginalized, ordered to dress differently and live apart from Christians. In many places, employment or owning land or a business was banned to Jews also so we didn’t get to work together. As a result, we never got to know each other in most times, and lived parallel but separate lives. Many Jews today don’t understand the first thing about Christianity, and our only association with it is that it is a system of belief in Europe that hates us. When race theories became popular in Europe with national ethnic identities, it only got worse because not only were we “Jews” but suddenly we were “foreigners” who didn’t have German (or Spanish or Polish or whatever) blood. So antisemitism, which had been religious in origin, morphed into racism.

I’m fortunate to have a lot of Christian friends, a love of history, and the interest in reading about Christianity and its history, so I’ve learned a lot more about Christians and appreciate their faith, their values and their support for Israel.